Estates with Mates

As I sat searching up a video to go with this story I was reminded of my school days of watching BMX and skateboarding videos when I should have been doing work, revising or listening to the teacher. I would have a video open in another tab one hiden from the teachers view and I think one on a whole other browser.None of the speakers used to work on the school computers apart from the teachers one so we had everything covered if you wanted to phase out for a while, killing time.I would watch the same ones on repeat. BSD videos were my go to ones. Kriss Kyle, Alex Donnachue, Dan Paley and the rest of that gang. I would sit there watching old London's Calling videos waiting to leave DT or whatever mty last class might be so that I could walk over to the bike lock areas and grab my bike and meet my mates to cycle over to East Acton or catch the train to Waterloo if it was a Thursday for the House of Vans BMX night. If it was a Friday or a weekend or any other day off we might have we'd head over to Fulham or Hammersmith probably both if we were over those ways of London or even get the train over to Kingston if we weren't some days if we were out riding for a while we would do all three. We once went over to Clapham Common but that was a bit of a slap and you'd have to pay to get there so it wasn't ever really worth it. Riding around in our school uniform and going back to my nan's estate to get changed quickly and meet my mates on theirs.

We got used to just chilling and doing nothing. Just going with the flow. Nothing else seemed to matter. Everything else just felat like a fake stress to me. It still does in a lot of ways. My mindset has nerver fully matured in that sense. I say it to my mates all the time now.

"Nah mate don't worry about that, theres nothing they can actually do, it's all fake stress" or "So what if you're skint for a bit bruv, it's all just fake stress anyway all of this is". Things that I have found myself saying even as a twenty something year old now. Things that are easy to live by until that Silver lining hazey view comes crashing back to reality when you have debt collectors calling up you're phone or you're unable to pay a few months late rent. It's all fake stress until then.

I started to read a book yesterday called 'The Darma Bums' by Jack Kerouac. It's a good book. One of the best that ever read if I'm being completely honest. I'd not heard of him until I had started writing. I was about 21 or something like that when I had and it was by pure chance that I stumbled upon one of his books in a bookshop in London a few day before I was meant to meet a mate of mine in Convent Garden. Another writer who I'd known before he was even aware that he was a writer himself. I had knwn him since I was 18. He was one of, if not, the first person that I had met on my Epsom Art & Design Foundation year at UCA. He was wearing all white when I had met him and said that it's ironic because on the inside he's dark. I was like OK in my head.Let's make this quick conversation,but we sat there in the canteen just him and I chatting shit until one of the tutors came in and told us where we needed to go. Sound. From there we got to know each other more and more. We went to Amsterdamn together sitting near each other on the coach across boarders from little old Angleterre. (A line taken from one of our favourite films The Gentlemen). Playing music and chatting shit. We'd been in the same class when the year had to split into different exploratory strands of research our's was Fashion Promotion. A class that I had never seemed to be in because I was off chatting shit to whoever wanted to hear me talk in the library or disturbing my mates classes. Though when I did decide to make an appearance I would pop in and say hello to them. When I returned to the uni for a few weeks of a degree version of the same course their faces where the only ones that I seemed to recognise completely. Though I haden't wanted to be there Charlie had tried to talk me into staying. I wasn't trying to hear it. I had enough going on outside of uni and hadn't wanted to stop trying to enjoy life outside of this course yet. I was juggling a new relationship, work and family commitments so this course wasn't cutting it for me. I didn't see the point in it and was sold a dream by the tutors that came before them. I was out.I couldn't stand the people and spent a whole lecture just staring at the doors that I had walked through 15 minutes late.

Charlie had aknowledged this and came up to me soon after; "saying you do not look like you want to be here bro" and with that I was off.

Only returning to the campus to use the studio with mister Samuel. A few years later we'd arranged to meet up a few months before and we went urban exploring around the town where we had once studied (Charlie also dropped out) we sat in the park that everyone ate lunch in and as we sat we ate the food of kings. A chinese place called bamboo basket, a lunch that was always a treat like lunch when it was pay day. We sat and ate our baskets and all caught up. We went from the city centre up to a race course in search of something interesting that had come up in conversation before hand. I had remembered a bunker from WW2 that people had wanted to find before but this was a different hunt. We walked up to the racecourse and came across an abandoned manor house. As we jumped over the wall we soon realised that we had found an old manor house that was now under construction to become soemthing modern.

We walked around the area. Walking through the building and walking through the old corridors with our phone lights on showing off white walls and workers equipment. I'd began tagging around the city of London and Leeds at this point and had some 'Hello My Name Is...' Stickers on me as well as a marker so we pulled them out and began to hit some of the walls in some of the unseen places. All in good nature of course.

We walked throught the what seemed to me more like a mansion house and came to anohter house on what I can now see as an estate where a ladder stood going straight up to the roof where the scaffolding stood fencing off the roof where workman had been tilling, canopes flapped in the cold nights sky as we sat on the side and looked out for the view. It was a bad time for me to realise that I was afraid of heights. Quite strange as I have only ever lived in flats up until this point. One's that stand taller than that. When as a kid I would dangle my toes over the edge and in the stairwells I would hang from the banisters and monkey climb my way down the flights from the fifth floor to the bottom.

I said this to the boys and as we climbed down the ladder again I was bricking it turning to navigate my way down they way we were taught during my lifeguard course. Health and safety was for some reason coming first in this moment. We got to the bottom and made our way for the walls that we scaled over. Bits of plywood that were used to create a guard of the perimeter. It seems that it has fallen short on these grounds. Though the fall on the way in was a blind one that almost cost me my ankle as I threw myself into what I thought was a ditch but was a sheer drop to another patch of falled dirt, hard ground to deeper hard ground and loose bricks. The way back home to safety was an easier one. A muscle up to a sheer drop and possible roll to road. As I was ontop of the fence I noticed some people coming out and talking. Seurity came to see what was going on and as they came around I dropped over the other side I was gone. We were laughing and chatting shit as we went away.

The rest of the road was without interest. Just boring houses and families walking past us down the country roads. We broke off in parts needing the toilet as the moon came to rise above us. We walked back to the road to bring us back into the only part of Epsom that I properly know. We walked back to the station and caught the frist train back to London. Splitting from one member of the pack the rest of us made our way to Putney where we went to pick up some bud. My friends called their friends and as we did so questioning why one of them hadn't answered we bumped into them as they cycled past. They remarked about how remarkable that was, though I understood it perfectly clear. Seeing how the world was smiling upon us that day. We walked towards a Putney housing estate and went to meet another for some grass to roll into our cigarettes. We made our way to a spot that they used to hang out at. Ontop of the highstreet where you can watch everyone walk past. We lit our cigarette and pasted it around as we sat on some deck chairs that had been left behind by whoever was up there before we arrived.

"We never see people up here they remarked" to me. In all of their years of getting up onto this rooftop they have never seen one person at the same moment as they saw the highstreet form this height. By this I mean this spot wasn't well known so I'm not going to disclose the location myself. (You can no longer get up their now anway, the ladder that we had used has been cut away from the wall, due to miss use during London's lockdown).

We sat watching the city lights listening to music and freestlying to each other. Trying to find the meaning of what each of us were saying and staring distantly into the lights of Barclays bank. The blue lights. "The Barclays Blues and the Wagamama stars," I think I was making communism referances in that state of mind. They asked and thats how I replied maybe I didn't even say it outloud though I know that I had, the narrative was spoken outload thought trains. Making sense of everything that I saw. Giving meaning to every part of my sight.

We climbed down off of the roof. I took photographs of the tags that I had left behind. I wonder now wether they are still up there and if so I now wonder who they benefit. Who am I now introducing myself to except for city pigeons. My friends took photo's of me as I desended from the roof top in the moment I thought that it captured it well though now I wonder what I will see if I see it again now two years later.

We made our way down the high road again and towards Franco Manco. If you hadn't realised earlier we were in desperate need of food for unmentioned reasons. As we walked I began to feel that I was laughing and Charlie said that he could hear me.

I wasn't. It was a strange sensation.

I caught the train back to Isleworth from there and facetimed my partner on the way I got home and went to sleep.

I wonder where the film photos that Jack Foley had taken have got to. The outing inspired me to purchase a film camera on the spot an idea that I had been playing with for a while and only commited to there and then because I could see how enthusiastic both Jack and Charlie were about their's whilst we waited for out lunch to be cooked at the restaurant. I'd wanted to get one so thar I could rely less on my phone for things as I walked around London. I wanted to be more present on them as I did my wanders through the city. I wanted to by one to capture moments exactly as they were and not need to take multiple photos of the same moment and be able to choose the perfect one. I wanted simplicity.

To tell you a little something about Jack for the context of the article. Jack is a writer from South London. I met him on my foundation year. He was in fact the first person that I interacted with as I walked into the Fine Art classroom. I'd arrived late and sat down with a few people. All staring at a tutor talk to us. Everyone was a stranger at this point and we looked at each from across the room. There wasn't anything romantic about this moment. Eyes locked, he's staring into space and in that space was little old me.

Foundation was a weird place for a lot of people. Maybe not a weird place thats a bit strong. It was an important place for everyone that went there. I don't know anyone that has said that they're not in contact with one person from there and in the years that have followed the people in my year have popped up left right and centre. Whilst in Leeds my friends bought tickets for a gig for a band called Island of Love. I'd not heard their music before or if I have I couldn't remeber the reason why their name rang so many bells. I was sure that I knew that name from somewhere I thought to myslef and said to my partner Clara Cheney, someone who had also been on the foundation year with me.

We went to the gig that my mates had bought tickets for and as they came onto the stage I immediately recognised the guitarist and lead singer of the band (they were the same person). I turned to Clara and we said the same thing to each other. "Wasn't he on our foundation course?".

After the gig I began to talk to him asking him how he's doing and he said to me that the last time that he saw me was in a Burger King in Amsterdam. I laughed and told my mates about it and they said that it sounded about right. A few weeks later and we were down in London visiting home and seeing a mate for there Jubillee party celebrations out of irony and there we began talking to a guy who's a photographer and knew the host through their trips to Greece. He beagn talking to us about his girlfriend who wasn't there that night but in Cardiff studying photography. He sat on a bench with myslef and Clara and began telling us about all of the birthday plans and surprises that he had install for her. He went on to ask if he could take my details for her as she needed some models for her course of photography I said; "sure".

I'd left my phone in Leeds at the time so when I checked it again to see his follow request I scrolled through his mutual followers and recent posts to see who his girlfriend was and it turned out to be someone who had been in my, Charlie and Jacks Fashion Promotion course whilst at Epsom. I told him about it and he said about how she said the same thing and about how small the world is.

I'm starting to agree.

The purpose in this piece of writing isn't about that though. In fact the writing had no purpose. I had just wanted to write. I had been inspired by the book that I had been reading in the library and had wanted to write out whatever came to mind from that. Stories of freedom and chance I guess. I wanted to capture here what the stories that I had read had made me feel. It sounded like an echoe to my soul.

I was going to say earleir before I took my Epsom based tangent about how Charlie had also begun to read Jack Kerouacs work. I couldn't recommend it more. I'd recently read a passage about them meditating on a hilltop. One of them with their eyes closed the other with them wide open. Both sat down still for hours as they waited for their friend to arrive, though as one sat with his prayer beads inbetween his interlocked hands stairing into the depth that was mountains, lakes and trees that laid across the landcsape, the other one sat with his eyes closed meditating in the most traditional way. There was still silence and the friend didn't arrive until the next morning. That is how it felt to be sat on that rooftop in Putney and riding those bikes in my most youthful and free years of being a teenager. There was a part in the book when they came down the hill. Kerouac wrote of how when he was heading down the hill with his friend they were almost flying. They were leaping so fast that they got to the bottom he wondered what his fears were of heading up though mountain the whole time worrying about falling, though on his decent he didn't have those worries anymore. They were flying.

This reminded me of my past days skateboarding and riding a BMX.

The fear that I had of my first drop in.

It put a few things into perspective and made me long to have a set of wheels of any kind beneath my feet.

To have that feeling of flow again as I use gravity in my favour.

To work the concaves of a mini ramp and quater pipe.

To hit the coping and soar or slide.

That's what led me to write this and to think of those dasy when we would just chill on estates or in a relxed place.

It made me think of the people that would remind me of the chapters idolised male 'Japhy Ryder'.

The freespirited soul.

After reading the passage and thinking about how it related to the images I had started to conjure up it reminded me of the video attached to the top of the story. This guy called Nathan Goring who I had riden with a few times when I was younger. Me and my mate were talking to him about buying a frame off of him but were too skint at the time to actually go through with it. In a moment of nostalgia when laying on my mates sofa at their uni home in Leeds I decided to go back in time on YouTube and start watching the BMX videos that I had once watched in school. I thought that it might send me to sleep when I then saw that he'd been signed to an America brand and had done an Edit (a video of riding clips) on council estates in and around London. Some of them I had recognised from when I was still riding at the age of 17 or 18.

It was strange to see what had come of the person that I used to know and it made me smile that such a talented rider had actually been able to make his passion his job.

Funny enough after writing this artical the next day I retold almost all of this story to my partner's brother as we smoked a cigarette in his garden. We spoke about graffitti, Brick Lane and then he invited me to Clapham Common for a cycle in the evening to meet a mate of his, a local BMX rider that he knows through skating there. It's funny how our paths hadn't crossed before. That's life though isn't it. I'm sure that I'd met his mate or had seen him at least once in the past just never paid too much attention to it or knew what significance that it migth hold later on.